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Minnesingers Bring Broadway to Island

It's been a common shorthand for years to describe the
Minnesingers, the elite performing ensemble of the Martha's
Vineyard Regional High School, as a singing group that also dances. This
past weekend's show at the Performing Arts Center left fans
groping not only for new superlatives but even for new ways of
describing the group. Perhaps it's best to call Minnesingers a
powerful weapon of mass entertainment, and leave it at that.

Close followers of this globe-trotting show choir still talk about
the dramatic high-water mark set by the Minnesingers in 1998 when they
performed Stomp, a dance number of sheer energy and athleticism. Stomp
was largely the work of a young dancer, Jil Matrisciano, who
choreographed that year's show. This year, Ms. Matrisciano was
back as choreographer, and the audience was eager to see if she could
top her previous work with the ensemble. They were not disappointed.

We're sure many Islanders who went back to the Performing Arts
Center Sunday afternoon to see the show a second time were looking
forward most eagerly to the program's stunning highlight, Girl in
the Yellow Dress, from the Broadway show Contact. It's safe to say
the Minnesingers have never before attempted a dance number so
ambitious, nor have they ever succeeded so well.

The setting is a nightclub. A lonely and disheartened man (Jesse
Wiener) walks in and engages the barkeep (Ben Retmier) in conversation.
All around them, women are dancing with imaginary partners to music that
pours from the sound system. Then, in a dramatic, sashaying entrance,
appears the piece's namesake, played by Emma Lovewell. When she
begins dancing, the effect is electric. The man at the bar protests that
he can't dance, but he is caught up in her spell and drawn onto
the dance floor, where his clumsiness is a comic foil to the grace and
power of the girl in the yellow dress. Suddenly, at the end of the
number, he is transformed and joins the ensemble in a breathtaking dance
sequence. The piece ends with all the dancers arranged in a tight
tableau at center stage.

The audience at the Performing Arts Center caught its breath, and
then basically went berserk.

Amid the applause, we remembered the words of Minnesingers director
Dan Murphy during intermission. "Hey," he'd said,
grinning, to a friend in the audience as he made his way toward the
control booth, "wait'll you see this."

There's so much that could be said in praise of the
Minnesingers in this production, a show that was intended to be taken on
the road and performed in England until war forced cancellation of the
trip. For two hours that seemed to pass in minutes, the choir showed
what wonders can be accomplished when the boundless energy of youth is
harnessed with discipline and channeled with creativity.

The choir opened its show in trademark fashion, in formal tuxedos
and dresses, arrayed on risers and singing from the classical
repertoire. This is the moment when many fans take the measure of this
year's vintage - near the end of a school season, when Mr.
Murphy has had most of an academic year to train and shape the
Minnesingers as a musical instrument. This year's ensemble lacked
the sheer vocal horsepower of some Minnesingers groups we can recall,
but their phrasing was full, their attacks immaculate and their
enunciation clear. When they sang in unison, as in the plaintive
recitative passages of Let My Prayers Rise Like Incense, the choir
seemed a single voice. When the singers split into four-part harmonies,
the effect was doubly dramatic for that, and the voices hit the sweet
center of each note.

The choral selections that introduce a spring show by the
Minnesingers are a bit like the compulsory figures events in Olympic
skating. They might not be the most fun for the performers, but they
provide the setting in which essential skills are polished. This year,
it was obvious that the Minnesingers went for high-gloss, and they got
it.

But the most crowd-pleasing portion of this show was On Broadway, a
romp through the great literature of music written for the popular
stage. We lost track of the many costume changes - Abbey Bailey
deserves a medal for her work as costumer for the ensemble. For all the
madness that must have been going on backstage (another medal goes to
stage manager Jeff Caruthers), the show was a seamless experience for
the audience, because it had so expertly been interspersed with solo and
duo numbers, giving the cast time to change.

These little pieces did more than hold the program together -
they showcased some of the wonderful individual talents among the
Minnesingers this year. Adam Lipsky was both hilarious and endearing in
full country-bumpkin regalia as he sang Hand for the Hog, from the
musical Big River. "If you took a notion," he sang, hands
jammed into the pockets of his bib overalls, "I'll bet you
could teach a hog to smoke a cigarette. Well, it might take a little bit
of time - But hell, what's time to a hog?"

The haunting duet from Les Miserables, Little Fall of Rain, was sung
with such sweet understatement by Lily Morris and Jesse Wiener that it
carried a surprising emotional wallop. And Kaila Binney and Jonathan
Ryan showed both singing and thespian skills in their impressive solos,
Nothing (A Chorus Line) and Mr. Cellophane (Chicago).

The numbers that rocked the house were the productions that featured
most of the Minnesingers. Only 31 of them were listed on the program,
but there must have been some mistake - with all the energy and
color on stage, there seemed twice that number at least.

An ensemble of six young women - Kaila Binney, Evy
Constantine, Ali Wilson, Christine Brissette, Jenna Zadeh and Sara
LaPiana - radiated a smoldering, man-eating sexuality in the
jailhouse number from Chicago, Cell Block Tango. The whole cast had way
too much fun with their Time Warp number from The Rocky Horror Picture
Show (with Alex Paquet-Whall as the ghoulish Riffraff). The boys bonded
with Ben Retmier in a lively scene from Big River, and the girls
scrubbed floors and complained fetchingly in their scene from Annie,
It's a Hard Knock Life: "No one cares for you a smidge, When
you're in an orphanage!"

The show ended with two rousing numbers from Grease, the musical
that so perfectly captures the energy of the teenage years. Then it was
time for standing applause, and for bouquets to honor the 11
Minnesingers whom the troupe will lose to graduation this year.

Dan Murphy will be building his ensemble next year without three of
his five bass singers, four altos, two tenors and two sopranos. But
he's been leading this group now since 1996, long enough to know
that with its great tradition, the Minnesingers show choir will attract
a new generation of stars in the season ahead.